Tuskegee Airman speaks at NCC-Monroe

In 1925, the year Dr. Eugene Richardson Jr. was born, the U.S. Army War College published a report claiming African-Americans were "inferior" to whites and therefore unfit for military combat training.

In 1925, the year Dr. Eugene Richardson Jr. was born, the U.S. Army War College published a report claiming African-Americans were "inferior" to whites and therefore unfit for military combat training.

"'We may not expect to draw leadership from (the black) race,'" Richardson quoted, reading excerpts from this report at a presentation at Northampton Community College's Tannersville campus.

"But, there's one in the White House now," Richardson said.

Monroe County Band of Brothers, a group supporting war veterans living in the area, organized the presentation at NCC to enlighten the community about the Tuskegee Airmen, African-American fighter pilots whose World War II service went unrecognized until the 1990s.

An Ohio native retired from an education career in the Philadelphia school system, Richardson trained with the Tuskegee Airmen, but never got to see combat himself because the war was over by the time he completed training in 1945.

Richardson grew up in a time when racial segregation was the law in America, attending schools where blacks' contributions were excluded from American history books.

He first got interested in flying after seeing the "Colored Flying Circus," a group of African-American aviators, perform an air show in Ohio in the 1930s.

When America entered World War II, the U.S. government again realized it would need able-bodied men of all races to fight, as it had in previous wars, but continued its tradition of racially segregating troops.

At age 17, eager to join the U.S. Army Air Corps (now the U.S. Air Force) and help fight the war, Richardson got his father to sign a parental permission form and then took and passed a pilot qualification test in Philadelphia.

At 18, he completed three months of basic training in Mississippi and then began 40 weeks of further training at Tuskegee Army Air Field in Alabama.

Tuskegee in 1942 had secured a contract with African-American civilian instructors to train black fighter pilots under the command of Benjamin Davis Jr., who would later become the Air Force's first black general, though these pilots would be serving apart from whites in the segregated Army Air Corps.

White superior officers at first opposed sending the black airmen into combat, but Davis and others persuaded them to do so, and the airmen proved themselves equal by shooting down enemy planes and blowing up enemy supply ground vehicles in Europe.

The airmen later were assigned the more important task of escorting bomber planes to and from enemy targets and protecting those bombers from aerial attacks.

Richardson had to do additional months of combat and other training after completing the 40-week program at Tuskegee Army Air Field.

He didn't complete this additional training until after the war had ended, and thus never got to see any combat himself.

Though the service of the Tuskegee Airmen and African-Americans in other military branches led to President Harry Truman desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces in 1948, blacks' contributions to the military up to and during World War II were not given proper recognition until decades later, Richardson said.

"And it was desegregation in the military that led to desegregation in schools and public places," he said.